I feel too broken. People keep telling me how I’ve come so far and done so well in my healing, but boy… get some fucked up shit going on and put some horrific memories in front me and suddenly all that was right is wrong. I have no hope. Only despair. I feel like a big fraud, pretending to be healthy when really I’m just fucked up and broken.

And the worse part of this is that the people that fucked me up so badly are winning as long as I stay in this place. I can’t let them win. I can’t give up. But I don’t know how to stop this cycle I’m on.

The longer I’ve been in therapy, the more obvious it’s been that this time of year is awful for me. I always feel betrayed, disappointed, unloved… I suspect people of lying to me. Of pretending to care when they really can’t stand me. And much more that I’d rather not get into here. Therapy has given me a visual record of these things. But it’s only this year that I’ve begun to understand all the ‘whys’ behind my feelings.

The hardest thing now is figuring out what to do with the feelings. Because the people in my life are not causing these feelings in me. They are very much coming from my past. I always know this is true when the sound of the train horn starts bothering me again. And it has been.

But what do I do with this information? How do I dig myself out of this hole? It’s such a double-edged sword. I want to rely on others to help me out of this place, but I also want to do it on my own. I don’t want to pull them into my shitty past by having to dig me out of where that shitty past has taken me.

I know, we all have boundaries and if people don’t want to help me, they won’t. So then I have to ask myself if this feeling of wanting to do it on my own is another remnant from my past. The ‘push everyone away or they’ll hurt you’ part. This is a confusing place I’m in.

Pushing people away is the exact thing my childhood abusers wanted me to do. When we have no one in our lives, we have no support structure. We’re less likely to tell. We’re more likely to keep putting up with abuse because that’s at least some contact with others.

Pushing people away and doing it on my own is the wrong thing to do right now. I need my friends. I need my chosen family. I need those that love me to check in with me now and again. Because I’m in a dark place and I don’t want to push anyone away.

I’m used to being the one to light a candle for someone. I’m comfortable there. But it’s so much harder asking others to light a candle for me. But I am. I need a light right now.